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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208379">Stormy Exercises</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella'>autobotscoutriella</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers (Bay Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Battlefields, Community: fandomweekly, Day Off, Gen, Storms, of the "questionable alien robot diet" variety, pseudo-cannibalism</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:13:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>997</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208379</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Even Decepticon officers and lethal scorpion drones need some time off to relax.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>FandomWeekly (2019-2020) Writing Challenge on Dreamwidth</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stormy Exercises</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally written for <a href="https://fandomweekly.dreamwidth.org/305716.html">FandomWeekly</a> prompt "Day Off".</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ominous clouds swirled overhead, threatening to break into a full storm within a few hours. Lightning crackled in the distance, bolts of white and blue splitting black clouds in half for brief seconds before darkness descended again. Somewhere over the mountains to the west, it was probably already pouring acid rain, judging by the haze of fog obscuring the horizon.</p>
<p>No one sane would want to be out in this mess; both Autobots and Decepticons had hastily locked down their camps and ensured shelter for themselves as soon as the clouds began to roll in. Even the guards were under cover, relying on radar to track anyone who might be foolish enough to try to cross enemy lines in a building ion storm. The city beyond the Autobot encampment was valuable, but not valuable enough to risk storm damage; there would be no battle today, unless the clouds suddenly cleared.</p>
<p>In short, it was the<em> perfect</em> day to take a beastformer drone out for some long-overdue exercise.</p>
<p>Blackout sat perched on a rock outcrop overlooking the dusty stretch of ground that had probably once been a decently fertile valley before a few battles swept through it, watching Scorponok plunge through metallic gritty sand. It would be a pain in the aft to clean out of its plating later, but a little extra scrubbing was better than having a twitchy drone letting itself out of its cache at all hours of the night.</p>
<p>Scorponok didn’t require much care, at least by companion-drone standards. It was relatively self-sufficient when it came to feeding itself; Blackout didn’t ask where or when it got its energon, but it was usually better-fed than he was, at least when it was allowed to scavenge. But the war required him to keep strict time and distance limits on its nighttime wanderings, and he could tell when it was getting restless, just as much as it could tell when he’d been groundbound for too long.</p>
<p>Scorponok could burrow and dig to its spark’s content as long as the rain held off; no one would bother them under these conditions. (It would have been suicide to interrupt the drone’s afternoon off, with Blackout standing watch like an overprotective raptor, and most of the Decepticons knew that—but the odds of some Autobot getting overconfident were high enough that Blackout had been erring on the side of caution prior to the storm’s arrival.) It needed to burn off steam without the added stress of foraging or combat.</p>
<p>A cold breeze swept across the field, swirling the shower of dust kicked up by the drone into a miniature tornado. Blackout shielded his optics with one giant hand and watched the black grit sweep off into the distance like a groundbound cloud. Maybe they didn’t have hours, after all.</p>
<p>The drone squealed and chittered, mechanical trilling audible even from almost a quarter-mile away. Blackout sent out a deep subsonic tone, signaling the drone to come back and show him what it had found. It had picked up live mines once or twice, and that had been an unpleasant surprise when it eventually returned to its cache.</p>
<p>Scorponok vanished into the ground and a moment later exploded out of the dust at the foot of the outcrop, sending up a whirlwind of grit and unspecified bits of metal. It looked as pleased with itself as an arachnid could, and was dragging a rough y-frame metal piece that still had a few bits of red plating hanging off it in its mouth.</p>
<p>“What is that?” Blackout had his suspicions—the battlefield hadn’t exactly been cleared, and Scorponok <em>was </em>known for scavenging corpses once in a while. It had brought him limbs before, in what he suspected was an attempt to share its energon source. “Let me see.”</p>
<p>Scorponok obligingly dragged its prize up onto the rock, though it didn’t let go. Blackout didn’t pry. Scorponok didn’t use its mandibles often, but when it did, they weren’t something one wanted to get in the way of, and his optics worked fine anyway.</p>
<p>And it wasn’t exactly a hard object to identify.</p>
<p>Blackout quirked a jagged eyebrow at what was very clearly the bottom half of some unfortunate soldier, minus most of the plating and three-quarters of a leg. “What have I told you about dragging body parts back to camp?”</p>
<p>Scorponok chirred, sounding far too pleased with itself.</p>
<p>“It’s not even intact enough to strip for parts. Can’t you taste the rust?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Chirrrrrrrp. Trilllllll.</em>
</p>
<p>“Eh, whatever. Don’t make yourself sick.” Technically, it probably wasn’t good for the drone, but they’d all been on starvation rations for decades. If Scorponok could stomach it, it might as well eat.</p>
<p>Thunder rolled and crashed overhead, accompanied by a fork of blue lightning that ripped the sky into thirds and sent electrical tingles shuddering down Blackout’s rotors. An icy breeze swept across the field, rattling the shreds of plating left on Scorponok’s prize. The storm was on its way in earnest now, and the fog line indicating where the rain stopped had moved forward almost to the edge of the Autobot camp in the distance.</p>
<p>“C’mon, back to camp. Let’s go.”</p>
<p>Scorponok hummed and chirruped in what sounded like irritation. Blackout rose, wiping away dark streaks of grit from his plating. “Day off’s over. I want to be undercover before it rains, and so do you.”</p>
<p>The drone chirred again, huffily, and plunged into the dirt, leaving only a slight hump to indicate its position. Blackout prodded the ground lightly with one foot. “You know that’s not going to work. Let’s go.”</p>
<p>Scorponok didn’t surface, but Blackout had only taken three steps toward the camp when the slight hump in the dirt shifted, jolted forward, and followed, leaving a furrow in its wake. Blackout smothered any hint of amusement in his field and extended another subsonic ping, giving it a signal to track.</p>
<p>There was no harm in letting it burrow a little longer, after all.</p>
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